Citizen Involvement Survey
The Citizens League's Minnesota Anniversary Project (MAP 150) is exploring policy innovation through citizen involvement (CI). We believe that citizens and public officials come to CI processes with good intentions and that both have important, but different, roles to play in developing and implementing good public policy. For the past 18 months, our project has been testing and observing different ways of engaging citizens in policy questions. We are learning a great deal and have turned to the academic literature for insights. The literature verifies two of our most significant findings:
- CI is seldom used to help develop and implement better policy.
- When asked about barriers to CI, public administrators tend to focus on the citizenry rather than their CI processes.
Citizen Involvement Survey
Through demonstration projects, we've been closely studying what processes and skill sets are necessary for good, meaningful CI processes. We have a great deal of anecdotal information, and have developed a survey to improve our understanding. We have taken our observations, with clues from the literature, and turned it into statements about citizen involvement. Two versions have been prepared--one for public officials and one for citizens. We'll then compare the results. We don't have the money to do a proper sampling, but we're hoping to have a big enough response that we can adjust the findings statistically for valid results.
How the Results Will Be Reported and Used
Timeframe and Reporting:- Preliminary results will be tabulated and presented at the City and County Managers' Association conference in early May. The Citizens League would be happy to make presentations to other groups about the results.
- Results will be reported at www.map150.org.
- Assuming the results are interesting and useful, we may keep the survey open past May to gather more input, especially targeting populations where we may be short on responses.
- We are likely to have access to a booth at the State Fair in August, where we would like to do a second round of surveying.
Intended Use of Results:
- To improve our understanding of what makes for authentic and meaningful citizen involvement, and to share that information.
- To form the basis of a CI training tool.
- To add to the academic literature and best practices.
To take the general public survey, click here.
The version for public officials can be found here.
Questions? Please contact Stacy Becker at stacybecker [at] comcast.net.